The present inventor previously invented the Stretched Fresnel Lens for Space Power, as described in U.S. Pat. No. 6,075,200 (Reference 1). NASA and the U.S. Department of Defense have recognized the many advantages of this Stretched Lens Array (SLA) technology for space power, and have funded a number of R&D contracts totaling about $10,000,000 to develop, test, mature, and fly SLA technology (References 2 through 4). SLA offers dramatic improvements in all of the critical performance metrics for space solar arrays, including lower cost ($/Watt of array power output), higher specific power (Watts/kilogram of array mass), higher stowed power (Watts/cubic meter of launch volume), improved photovoltaic cell radiation hardness (due to smaller cell sizes, allowing thicker radiation shielding at lower mass penalty), and higher voltage operation (again due to the smaller cell sizes, allowing thicker dielectric insulation at lower mass penalty). However, the previously patented version of SLA requires the flexible lens material itself to be placed in tension for the life of the deployed array, which can be subject to severe temperature variations on orbit as the array passes into the Earth's shadow and out again into full space sunlight as the spacecraft orbits the Earth. The presently preferred stretched lens material is silicone rubber, specifically Dow Corning DC93-500 material, which is mechanically weak (with a tensile strength of about 1,200 psi or 8 MPa, and with a modulus of elasticity of about 500 psi or 3.5 MPa) and which has a gigantic coefficient of thermal expansion/contraction (about 300 ppm/° C.). In a recent space flight experiment on TacSat 4 (Reference 4), a small SLA performed well for the first six months of the flight, but then suffered a dramatic drop in power in the seventh month which was due to the lens developing a tear or rip, which finally led to complete lens failure in the fourteenth month of the flight (Reference 5). Failure analysis (Reference 5) identified the following combined effects as the cause of the lens failure: (i) the weak silicone material, (ii) continuous tensioning (stretching) of the weak silicone material, (iii) space radiation (including electrons, protons, and solar ultraviolet photons) embrittlement of the silicone material, causing the material to stiffen, harden, and weaken, (iv) high cyclic stresses due to many hundreds of thermal cycles. When the lens ripped all the way across in the fourteenth month of the flight, the solar cells previously in the focus of the stretched lens lost all effects of concentration of sunlight and returned to much lower one-sun performance levels. The present invention solves this SLA problem by introducing lightweight but strong cords, fibers, or wires to support the weak silicone material, which will no longer be required to carry the mechanical load of the stretched lens. Instead, the mechanical load from tensioning the stretched lens will be carried by the cords, fibers, or wires, and the lens itself will be supported by the cords, fibers, or wires, and will always remain in a low stress condition. This new invention therefore represents a more elegant, stiffer, more thermally stable, and longer lifetime version of the original SLA, with the same outstanding performance metric attributes and low cost, but without the limited lifetime.